Reviews
- from Train Travel - Video image by Rees Archibald
Eindhoven Dagblad
Matthew Shlomowitz toverde het ensemble om tot een vermakelijk slaapdronken amusementsorkestje dat met grote precisie overal net naast zat.
Translation: Matthew Shlomowitz magically transformed the ensemble into a drunken amusement orchestra, which, with great precision, was playing wrong everywhere.
Theme Street ParadeThe Australian
Premiered by this quartet last year, Shlomowitz’s Theme Street Parade (2009) lived up to its name. The opening phrase was threaded through the entire piece, undergoing a wildly varied rollercoaster ride. Full of swirling textures, clashing contrasts and frenetic energy, Theme Street Parade was captivating.
Sydney Morning Herald
Theme Street Parade by the Australian Matthew Shlomowitz, who lives in London, had a welcome distinctiveness of voice, with a brittle rhythmic theme obsessively tossed around and coloured by harmonies and sonorities of the sort one imagines T. S. Eliot had in mind when he spoke of rats’ feet over broken glass. The music tried at times to wind down from this jauntiness but kept being prodded along as though by recurring thoughts and harmonies of acidic grit so that the impression was of being caught up in motion and energy one cannot control.
Line and LengthThe Times (UK)
At least with our brains attuned to Bach’s musical plate-spinning we could properly strain the juices from Shlomowitz’s meaty ten-minute roast. And some of them were pretty tasty: short melodic fragments that combined, opposed and recombined in some arresting configurations, from warning sirens to ominous wheezes.
Like the bowled cricket ball the piece owes its name to, Line and Length showed volatile, risky ambiguity, and Calefax were as comfortable with its raw materials as they were with Bach’s canons.
The Sunday Times (UK)
... but they broke off halfway to give Matthew Shlomowitz’s specially commissioned Line and Length, a short, lively piece of process music with a title from cricket and a sound like caterwauling, if one can use the word positively.
De Volkskrant (The Netherlands)
Dat Calefax ook zonder stersolist kan, liet de groep horen in een ingenieuze opdrachtcompositie. De vijf blazers gingen heftige dialogen met elkaar aan in Line and Length van Matthew Shlomowitz, een verrijking van het Calefax-repertoire.
Translation: That Calefax without star soloist can let the group hear in an ingenious composition. The five winds were in fierce dialogues with each other in Line and Length by Matthew Shlomowitz, an enrichment of the Calefax repertoire.
Earth Breeze SmokeAachen Zeitung (Germany)
Aber mit Earth Breeze Smoke für zwei Sopranflöten und Diktiergerät von Matthew Shlomowitz gelang ein Kabinettstückchen, das zwar gewöhnungsbedürftig, aber äußerst amüsant war. Wie kleine Kobolde, mit Kapriolen, rhythmischen Gags und unerwarteten Zusammenhängen im Wechselspiel der Flöten überraschten die beiden Flötistinnen.
Translation: But with Earth Breeze Smoke for two soprano recorders and dictaphones, Matthew Shlomowitz managed a showpiece that, while taking a while to get used to, was extremely entertaining. Like small goblins, with capers, rhythmical gags and unexpected contexts in the interplay of flutes, surprised the two flautists.
Slow Flipping HarmonySydney Morning Herald
Matthew Shlomowitz’s Slow Flipping Harmony for four instruments was like four roughly painted lines on a large canvas, dripping and merging and fading out as the brush ran out of paint.
FateThe Age (Melbourne)
Australian composer Matthew Shlomowitz spent some time learning from Ferneyhough, but his mentor’s desire for complete density is not found in the young composer’s Fate (and the butterfly effect) for solo guitar, solo trombone, chamber ensemble with CD playback, which concluded the concert. Although too long, some beautiful instrumental colours moved through the auditorium.
The Cattle Raid of Cooley or The ShowSydney Morning Herald
This year has seen them consolidate eight years of hard work with two major Sydney concerts and a successful European tour. Their latest show, The Imaginary Opera Project, is a worthy finale to the year. Matthew Shlomowitz, composer (and co-founder of the ensemble), has dreamt up a multi-media confabulation of folk tales, and brought together a team of musicians, visual artists and writers to put his dream across. Shlomowitz’s version of “opera” is a very 21st-century concoction: dispensing with singing, dancing and costumes in favour of a spoken narrative with projections of words and illustrations.
It’s a playful mode of expression, and it panders to a post-modern audience urge to interpret and find meaning in all things abstract. Shlomowitz’s music is uncompromisingly abstract, finding beauty in complex gestures and patterns rather than in reassuring melody and rhythm. It's a challenging score but the level of musicianship, ensemble playing and sheer virtuosity from the nine-piece band made for a genuinely thrilling performance. Oboist Adam Yee was consistently impressive among the many stand-out moments.
The projected images are both illuminating and distracting, providing some tantalising points of connection between the words and music, but also setting off new ideas, new threads to a multi-layered narrative. If this team approach to creating an artwork is the way of the future, it promises to be exciting. But for now there is still plenty of refinement needed on what presents as intellectually sparkling, but rough-cut.